Bob Stewart pictured on a visit to Moscow in 1961.
The following article celebrating forty years of the Communist Party of Great Britain was written by Bob Stewart and appeared in the September 1960 issue of the journal Labour Monthly. At the time Bob was 83 years old and had ‘retired’ from active work three years earlier. The piece is written from the perspective of being one of the last men standing’ from the formation of the CPGB in 1920.
“HISTORY will record that the birth of a Communist Party in Britain was the outstanding event of the 1920’s. The fact that it was nearly three years after the Bolshevik victory of 1917 indicates the difficulties encountered and overcome before it saw the light of day. Small as the event appeared, it was nevertheless the political culmination of more than a hundred years of British working class struggle against the rule of the capitalist class. These years had inscribed indelible victories as well as many defeats on the banners of the oldest working class movement of Europe.
Along the years it built the modern Trade Union movement which despite weakness, sectionalism and betrayal is still a powerful weapon and a training ground for militant workers. It embraced Chartism which meant the intrusion into politics of revolutionary ideas and practices on a mass scale. It eventually cast off the manacles of the Liberal Party even if it is not vet free from their illusions. It gave birth to the Labour Party out of the strange assortment of Fabians, Independent Labour Party, Social Democratic Federation which became the British Socialist Party, the latter becoming a leading component of the Communist Party, and was itself affiliated to the Labour Party. Due to historic circumstances which I have not space to detail, the Labour Party has rejected a scientific outlook. It rejected Marxism, abhorred revolution, and has spent half a century confusing and befuddling the working class with hopes that capitalism would change its spots or at least let the right wing leaders of Labour paint them a different hue.
Necessarily capitalism imputed foreign parentage to the C.P. as it had done to Chartism and to early Socialist or other progressive movements. The mud refused to stick. The C.P. was bone and flesh of the British working class. Of course it had and is proud of its international connections. That also is a fine tradition of our class. The more immediate circumstances attending the birth of the C.P. may be thus described. Prior to 1914-18 and during the First World War there were outside of the official Labour Party many of the most class-conscious and militant workers who were split up amongst a number of more or less Marxist sects, e.g., the Socialist Labour Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation, South Wales Socialist Society, and many lesser bodies in various localities. These were largely concerned about the purity of their gospel. There were also the shop stewards, the workers’ committees and many unattached rebels, New Age readers, Guildsmen, etc. Amongst them were great agitators and strike leaders who had with Tom Mann and others headed the struggles of workers on Merseyside, Clyde and elsewhere before World War I.
August, 1914, saw official Labour, like official Social Democracy, dip their flags of red and appear in the flamboyant colours of the capitalists they were supposed to fight against. A sorry spectacle indeed, relieved if but a little by the few who kept the flag aloft. The course of the war brought hellish experiences to the workers. Along came Military Service Acts, which gave rise to an Anti-Conscription movement, Munitions Acts, Rent Acts, high prices. Out of these struggles the clamant need for unity, discipline and wider understanding was arising here, as in every country.
Then came 1917, and the glorious victory of the Russian workers and peasants. The movement in Britain was reborn out of the fires of war. On July 31 and August 1, 1920, after months of negotiation, a convention was brought together in London by the Joint Provisional Committee of the Communist Unity Conference, representing chiefly British Socialist Party, Communist Unity Group, South Wales Communist Council. (The unification was completed in the early months of 1921. The Leeds Congress in January, 1921, brought in the Scottish Communist Labour Party, whose leading members included William Gallacher and J. R. Campbell; while the left wing of the Independent Labour Party, including Shapurji Saklatvala, came in a month or two afterwards.)
At this founding convention in August, 1920, well-known figures included Bob Williams of the Transport Workers Federation, A. A. Purcell, Colonel Malone, William Mellor, Joe Vaughan, Arthur McManus, Tom Bell, William Paul and Albert Inkpin. Of the Provisional Executive elected I fear I am now alone. Some have done their day and passed on. Others sought other fields and have faded from my memory. The convention was serious and full of zeal, sharply divided on the question of affiliation to the Labour Party, but when Paul and Hodgson had finished debate and affiliation was carried the Conference agreed in unanimity. I recollect that after the convention finished on the Sunday, a group comprising Bill Hewlett of Wales, Bill Jackson of Sheffield, Frank Simpson of Perth, George Anderson of Coatbridge, Fred Douglas and myself from Dundee were steered by Jock Laurie of Aberdeen to what he called the ‘Merble Airch’. Before long we were spectators at a B.S.P. meeting. Jock said, ‘the speaker’s gey cauld’. Off he went and how he managed it I had not time to find out before I was hustled through the crowd and found myself making what I suppose must have been the first report back of the first Party Conference, which was received with great enthusiasm. Then to the train, where fate had delivered a very orthodox clergyman into our carriage, and did we baptise him!
That was our send-off. What have we to show for our Party over the years? Not enough but still a lot. We played our part in pulling capitalism’s hands off Russia. We backed and fought for British Miners when officialdom turned their backs and even their guns on them. We expelled even big Bob Williams for his part in the Triple Alliance betrayal of the miners. The defeat of the miners opened the way for attacks on engineers, textile-workers, seamen, etc. In all of these struggles our members were active. In the heat of these struggles some succumbed and left us for easier paths. We fought the opportunist heritage brought in by local Councillors or personal egoists. The Government of the day soon recognised the new type of Party. Raids were frequent, our General Secretary, Albert Inkpen, was arrested and sentenced, active workers, especially in the minefields, were doing time. Our organisation was still lamentably weak and sectarian. Printers were blackmailed into refusing to print our articles and pamphlets. We started our own printing works. Our editors faced libel and sedition charges, so that we needed a double shift, sometimes a treble one.
By 1924 we had our first taste of Labour Government, rather sourish at that. Johnny Campbell put the cat among the pigeons and very much upset MacDonald & Co. By 1924 we began to put new life into the trade unions through the Minority Movement whose secretary was Harry Pollitt, later Arthur Horner. So 1925 opened new economic battles. Government was compelled to subsidise mineowners and assume emergency powers. To prepare for the next round they arrested twelve of our leading members. They were found guilty of conspiracy to utter seditious libels. Six, with previous convictions, were given twelve months.
Six were offered release if they would forswear their allegiance. But one and all refused and served six months’ sentences. Further attacks on the miners were more than decent workers were prepared to put up with, so came the General Strike and wholesale arrests, office raids. This greatest confrontation of the classes in Britain in our time sent their leaders shivering to sell the pass and leave the miners to their fate. Fierce punishment befell the workers in consequence of this betrayal. Victimisation was common and hard, hard times kept knocking at the door. The miners survived their desperate ordeal. . . .
1929. Once again a Labour government which succumbed to American capitalist pressure. The defection of McDonald, Thomas and Snowden and their descent into a ‘National Government’ did not stop the economic rot. Unemployed relief was cut to the bone. These tested our membership and they withstood the pressure and nobly headed or fought in the ranks of the unemployed, joined in hunger marches, fought the police and won concessions. Meantime the German monopolists had been set on their feet again by American and British investments. But being unable to rule in the old way, they washed out the remnants of democratic practice and forged a rod of iron for Hitler to wield while they cheered him on to the fight against the growing Soviet power. Fascism reared its black flags in Britain too, but the working class showed its strength and routed it. In 1935 we scored a real Parliamentary success by the return of William Gallacher who by his Communist attitude did much to add to his own and the Party’s prestige. We led the fight and formed the British section of the International Brigade which saved the honour of the British working class in the battlefields of Spain. 1939: that fatal year that saw the outbreak of that most vicious war of the centuries. Here also our Party gave freely of its dearest and best to bring the war to a victorious end. When it ended the British workers’ stored-up anger burst through to the defeat of Churchill and placed their hopes on the Labour Government, which shooed them off with meagre reforms and played a sorry second fiddle to American big business so that once again our Party is leading the fight against further war.
Now we have established the Party as a potent factor in British politics. Our numbers have grown. We have lost many brave and able leaders but we have raised able successors. Our camp of Peace grows daily and despite provocation we know that the forces of Peace will prevail. All our efforts are turned in that direction. Our literature is improving daily. Our Daily Worker is known the world over. We are no longer the feeble body of propagandists that we were in 1920 but a strong virile Party worthy of the class we find it an honour to serve.”
Portrait of Bob Stewart taken by Edith Tudor-Hart.
Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber's chain has bound us,
Fond memories bring the light,
Of other days around us.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
At the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in Moscow in 1961, I met among others an old man whom I discovered was one of Lenin’s oldest companions, even in the days before the Russian Communist Party was formed. We had a long discussion about politics past and present, and the Communist Parties past and present, with particular emphasis on the difficulties of the days long since gone; and naturally, as old people do, we discussed ages. Petrov, the man with whom I was having the discussion, was then eighty-seven years, and I eighty-four years. In all this welter of reminiscence I said to Petrov, “We must meet at the dawn of Communism.” “All right,” he replied. “We shall meet in Moscow in 1980.” So that’s a date, though I have had doubts of whether Petrov and I will be able to keep it. However, I heard Petrov speak on a radio programme from Moscow in April 1966 and my spirits revived. I certainly have no intention of throwing in life’s sponge at this interesting stage in world politics and so the meeting may yet take place.
Much more certain than the meeting between Petrov and myself is the dawn of communism. In all my political life, since the early days of work in the Dundee jute mills, through all the vicissitudes of political, trade union and social work, I have never lost my faith in the people to change the economic and political system which holds back progress to a full and happy life. Of course there have been the ups and downs. That is life, and it is part of political life as well. But as I look back with a mature eye to the days of the early struggles of the Communist Party, I can see the giant strides that have been taken in Britain.
One of our first tasks on the formation of the party was to get clear what revolution meant. Our political enemies naturally pictured the revolution as a bloody civil war, as a destructive act, neglecting entirely the aim of the revolution, which is to transfer political power from the capitalist class to the working class. It is that transfer of power which constitutes revolution, whether it is accompanied by civil war as it was in Russia and China, or in a different set of circumstances, as it happened in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. In Britain and the countries of Western Europe it seems reasonably certain it will be a peaceful revolution achieved within the present parliamentary system, but changing Parliament from a showpiece into a workshop, legislating in the interests of the people.
We explained our main aim, the transfer of political power, patiently in speech and print; and gradually it became understood if not always accepted. Our second trouble in the early days was to get our own people to accept the idea that revolution in one country cannot be just a carbon copy of revolution in another country. In the early days it was common to find at our meetings five Russian posters to each British poster. Exaggerations took place and in some districts the party looked more Russian than British. There was a Smolny Institute in Sheffield. All this was very well intentioned but certainly wrong in the field of British political work. We soon learned that the major part of our policy and work must be for our own country-which does not exclude, nor can it, the greatest possible interest in the countries outside Britain, and in particular the greatest interest in what was then the only socialist country in the world, Russia. Even to this day there are people who talk of the Communist Party as a foreign or Russian party. Well, this was also said of the early socialist movement. It was falsely accused of being a German importation.
In its forty-six years of existence the Communist Party in Britain, in addition to being effective, active and militant in the workshops, has secured a large following of workers who respect it even if many of them, as yet, have not joined. The party has had great success in education for scientific socialism, in all aspects of Marxist philosophy. In its daily news-paper, the Morning Star (for many years the Daily Worker), in its weekly and monthly publications, in many thousands of pamphlets and books, there has been the necessary explanation of the political events which has been read, appreciated and discussed by millions of people. In the times when the labour movement was in retreat, the political discussion and action arising from these political explanations held the movement together and laid the basis for future advance. It may be idle to speculate where the British socialist movement would have finally landed if it had not been for the work of the Communist Party, but it is a fact of life that many times in the last forty-six years, in government and out of it, the Labour Party has moved far away, very far away, from socialist principle and practice. The criticism of the work of the labour movement by the Communists has many times assisted in bringing the movement back to policy and practice that represented the interests of the working class and condemned capitalism.
This condemnation of the capitalist system is at the centre of working-class politics. Condemnation is needed, not because the individual boss is bad, or a group of bosses treat their workers badly, although this frequently happens. We don’t object to capitalists as good husbands to their wives and good fathers to their children. What we object to is the miserable way they make their living, by exploiting the workers, by making profit out of the labour of the workers. The capitalists are parasitical, yet they get a much better living than the workers. The aim of the Communists in politics is to end capitalism and the capitalists’ parasitical existence. The Communists take a Marxist scientific view of events. We don’t live in the clouds, although it was a member of the Communist Party who first soared into space and it is the Soviet Union which leads the world in space exploration.
We know how and why capitalism came into existence. It was not born overnight. It had to destroy the handicaps and barriers to its progress from the reactionary feudal system which it superseded, and with quite a bloody red hand. There was no nicety about the emergence of capitalism. In many countries kings literally lost their heads. The British capitalists conveniently forgot about King Charles being beheaded when Russian capitalism was overthrown, and they condemned the killing of the Tsar. They forgot they themselves had set an example.
The Communists know that capitalism is not an everlasting system, and that just as it displaced feudalism and mercantilism in order to develop the production processes and meet the needs of the people, so now is socialism necessary to break the capitalist stranglehold on production to meet the needs of the present day. Feudalism became a fetter on production and the capitalist system took the fetter off. Now the people will end the capitalist system which has become a barrier to developing production. Socialism must come to provide a better and more scientific system in which the means of production will be owned by the community and work will become a virtue and not a drudge.
In the early days of the party we had to argue from theory alone. We have now in the course of history reached a stage when theory has become practice. As Lenin said, “Theory is grey but the tree of life is green.” So the green tree is growing, and now in the Soviet Union and China and in the other socialist countries there is the evolution of new industrial techniques to meet the requirements of the twentieth century, and the twenty-first which is not so far away. It was easy in the early days for the capitalists and the Labour leaders to sneer at the size of the Communist Party, to jeer at our utopianism, but great developments have taken place and are continuing to take place in the socialist countries. The opponents of socialism can’t jeer away a new town, vast new industrial automated plants, great new industrial regions, some of which produce more than the entire production of some of the advanced capitalist countries.
For example, the British or United States railwaymen can’t say to the Russian railwaymen “Wait till you catch up with us”, because the Russian railways are now far in advance in all modern railway techniques. This is not because the Russian railwaymen are born better, but because their industry is more modern and because socialist practice in the Soviet Union has electrified more railways than has all the capitalist world put together.
People all over the world can see, if they want to see, the fundamental difference between socialist industry and capitalist industry. In the socialist states the trade union office is in its rightful place, inside the factory, not pleading for a bigger share of the cake, but as an essential part of the running of the factory and taking part in every discussion and decision on production and labour conditions. There are no brass hats in the factory who have the last word on what is to happen to wage increases and hours of labour. In the socialist states the day of the brass hats is over and their obstructing power flung into the dustbin of history.
In 1917 there were 300,000 Communists in Russia. Today there are 12,000,000. Twelve million devoted scientific workers can make a tremendous productive difference in an old economy. As they lead the Russian workers in operating the new modern industrial techniques in the vast new industrial plants, great new production targets are set and broken, set and broken again and again. Production is rising to vast new heights.
I remember vividly my first journey to Russia in 1923, the tremendous thrill I experienced when I crossed the frontier. “Ours!” I said, “a country which the workers own and control.” On that first trip from Riga to Moscow I shared a compartment with Vassili Kolarov, his wife and two young sons. Kolarov, who became head of the People’s Republic in Bulgaria, was the bosom companion of Georgi Dimitrov with whom he worked for many years, sharing the disappointments of the stagnant periods and the joys of the revolutionary periods. Georgi Dimitrov of course became famous after the Reichstag fire trial in Hitler Germany, but at that time, in 1923, he was just “one of the boys” with whom I later had the pleasure of working.
Looking back on the Russia of my first visit, how right I was to be immensely proud of entering a country which was owned and controlled by the workers, in which capitalism had been overthrown! How right I was in my judgment that this land of socialism would transform the lives of the people and in doing so set an example to the workers all over the world!
It is not a question of rivalry between country and country. Progress does not rest on the character of persons or nations. It is a question of science being applied to the most important thing that human beings engage in, that is making a living, and in our day making a living means giant production for giant populations, the elimination of hard labour, using the machine to release the workers from hard toil and to reduce the hours of labour and give the workers more and more leisure time. There are so many things to do, so many things to learn, that no person lives long enough to do and learn even a fraction of them, even the cleverest of us, and most of us are not too clever. At the age of ninety years there are many things I still want to do, still want to learn to do.
On looking back over the many years of work of the British Communist Party we should remember the positive as well as the negative features. Never at any time did we admit the hill was too steep or the mountain too high to climb. Our attitude has always been “How can we overcome?” and by our work we have overcome the one-time hostility of many millions of people who, while in open discussion they will not say too much, nevertheless in private conversation will admit how impressed they are with the work of the Communists and the Communist Party. Millions of people now understand perfectly well that the Communists are not the “troublemakers” the capitalist press, the T.V. and the radio would like to brand them, but honest, sincere people who work for a fundamental political change. This has been a long process.
In the early twenties the Communist Party fought with the miners, tried to mobilise the entire labour movement to the side of the miners. The Communists gave everything they had in support of A. J. Cook in his fight for “Not a minute on the day–Not a penny off the pay’. It was the Communist Party who expelled Bob Williams from their ranks because of the part he played in destroying the triple alliance of miners, railway and transport workers.
In the General Strike we knew more of what was happening than the General Council of the T.U.C. We did not spend our valuable time playing football matches with the police. We gave the striking workers leadership as their militancy developed. This contrasted with the T.U.C. leaders who got diarrhea and went chasing round corners following Lord Samuel and looking for a way to sell out.
After the strike it was the Communist Party who organised to reform the ranks of the working class and the unions for the political and industrial struggles of the 1930s. In the fight against the sell-out of the Labour Government by Ramsay McDonald and his associates, and against the anti-working-class legislation of the National Government that followed, the Communists were always part of the vanguard.
Then came the fight against fascism. I remember well the formation of the British battalion of the International Brigade which went to fight fascism in Spain. At first many ordinary Labour people were hostile to the idea, but as the struggle against fascism deepened and the fight for Spanish democracy against Franco developed, so did the understanding of the necessity of the fight against fascism grow. The International Brigade grew in popularity, and when they were repatriated from Spain under a decision of the United Nations I remember the amazing scenes at Victoria Station in London. Tens of thousands of people filled the station and crowded the surrounding streets to welcome the British soldiers home. Everyone felt that the Brigade had honoured Britain by their fight against fascism and had upheld the good name of the British labour movement.
In the struggle decisive changes take place in people’s thinking, and this leads to further action. The Communists said the war that ravaged Spain would come to Britain if rapacious fascism were allowed to proceed unchecked. We were right, not because we were good astrologers or prophets, but because we were Marxists and could read events better than other political parties.
In my many decades of work I have met, discussed with, worked with, and become friends with some of the finest people who ever breathed. Men and women whose main aim in life was to serve mankind. Men and women who came from many nations and whose skins were of different colours but whose aim in life was the highest of all: to serve. Many of these people are found in the pages of this book. Many younger than myself have died, leaving their mark on politics and political parties. Some of them greatly influenced my thinking and I want to write of a few of them who made a decisive impact on British political life. Not in order of merit: that would be quite impossible because they all had merits of different degrees, and in any case my prejudice, if I have one, favours the men and women who come from the workshops, a bias not entirely separated from my experience of life.
A man who influenced masses of people in Britain was Harry Pollitt, for many years the General Secretary of the Communist Party. An outstanding politician, Harry was virtually born in the working-class movement. His home was a socialist organising agency. His mother was a clear-thinking and capable socialist, and from boyhood Harry was forever on the stump. No doubt this early training was invaluable, because he developed into one of the finest orators in the British political movement. This fact was widely acknowledged by his bitterest political enemies, and remember he spoke from platforms in the days of great orators in other parties, Winston Churchill and Aneurin Bevan to mention only two.
But Pollitt was not only a very fine speaker. He had organising qualities few possessed. Always for Harry the question was “What is to be done?” Not only did he pose the question but he worked on it and tried to answer it. He applied himself diligently to everything he did and was extremely careful in the preparation of his speeches. This stood Harry in good stead when the shorthand notes of the reporting policeman would be put against his own notes in the Court cases in which he became involved. One thing Harry Pollitt proved beyond all doubt. The speaker who likes to speak has every chance to become a good speaker. Many times I have tired listening to speakers telling me how difficult it was for them to speak. Well, if they found it difficult to speak no doubt their listeners would find it more difficult to listen. The good speaker is one who feels he has something to say, a message to give. Anyone who heard Harry Pollitt in any meeting, big or small, found his speech lucid, powerful and sincere. While speaking of the needs of the present Harry could always paint a picture of how socialism could be won and the joy it would be for the working class. That was his great achievement. In both speech and organisation he brought many thousands into the struggle for socialism in Britain and many into the membership of the Communist Party.
Another man who loved to speak, and who was sometimes impatient of others speaking, was Willie Gallacher. He was an experienced workshop man who, in the period of the First World War, by his forthright stand against sectarianism, did much to weld together the famous shop stewards’ industrial movement which played such an effective role in Glasgow and many of the great industrial centres such as London, Sheffield, Manchester, Birmingham and other cities. Every. where the name of Gallacher was known as a working-class leader in the industrial and political movement. He was a man without self-interest whose life was devoted to the working-class movement and who made an unrivalled contribution to the work of the British Communist Party.
Internationally Gallacher became a well-known figure. When he met Lenin, he complained because Lenin, while praising his courage, attacked his political ideas. Gallacher told Lenin that he (Gallacher) was an old hand at the game of politics. Lenin’s justified criticism of Gallacher was published in that internationally famous book Left-Wing Communism–an Infantile Disorder. This book was sorely needed in the early 1920s when the young Communist Parties were making so many fundamental political errors. Because of Lenin’s advice, Gallacher discarded his anti-parliamentism and helped many others to do so. The negative attitude that a good socialist could not remain good if he went into parliament was strongly held in the twenties.
One very good characteristic of Gallacher’s was his ability to admit to being wrong on occasions, a characteristic not readily shared by a few of the leading Communists. Gallacher’s parliamentary career stands out as an example to those who believe that Members of Parliament can remain true to socialist principles and fight for them in Parliament. When he first entered Westminster he was portrayed as a revolutionary who wanted the streets to flow with blood. But he proved in his fifteen years in the House of Commons that he was a first-class parliamentarian. In fact he was one of the few who knew the rules of the House sufficiently well to break them and get away with it. His first thought in Parliament during any business before the House was: Will the working class gain? On that he took his stand, and his hundreds of speeches recorded in Hansard from 1935 till 1950 are essential reading for any serious student of British political history.
Harry Pollitt and Willie Gallacher are dead. Many others who gave all their life for the advancement of the working class are also dead. Albert Inkpin, Arthur McManus, Tom Bell, Tommy Jackson, big Jock McBain, the names are countless. All of them great working-class politicians and great companions in the day-to-day struggle.
There are a number like myself who are blessed with long life and are still working hard. R. Palme Dutt was one of my early mentors and mentor to many leading Communists. He comes from a remarkable family of highly educated people and I doubt if anywhere in the world, certainly not in Britain, one could find a political journalist who has made such a regular, consistent contribution to the elucidation of British political problems, particularly in relation to the colonial and ex-colonial countries. There is also that wee pawky Scotsman John Ross Campbell, familiarly known as J.R.C., who was in the early days editor of the Glasgow Worker and became, many years later, editor of the Daily Worker. He is one of the best working-class politicians and economists Scotland has ever produced. His speech is remarkably clear, witty and always down to earth. In those early days his workshop notes in the Glasgow Worker had a very wide readership.
And so I could go on, lists and lists of names, industrial and professional, all of whom made big political contributions to the struggle for socialism. One thing above all these older leading Communists understood was the fundamental Marxist principle: “That which is coming into being and growing is more powerful than that which is ascendant but is already dying away.”
The leading Communists of the past educated, trained and prepared the many thousands of Communists of the present who by their diligent and successful work have been elected to leading positions in the labour movement. This re-creation on an ever increasing scale is the guarantee that the British people will take the road to socialism.
The great world political argument rages. For Socialism. For Capitalism. The Communists understand that the aim of a modern political party must be to end capitalism. Not to keep it on its feet to totter around preventing the introduction of dynamic socialism. Not to agree to sacrifice by the workers in the interests of the bosses, but to end capitalism for all time. The Communists by their scientific analysis know that socialism will finally be victorious, and while in the Western capitalist countries the capitalist fetters may bind the hands of the workers for a few years yet, without doubt the tools are ready, well and truly sharpened to break the bonds.
In little more than a decade the call will change. Then it will be “For Communism!” I am certain, positively certain, that the world will see the dawn of communism, and I will frankly admit, despite having had more than my three-score years and ten, and a full and exciting life, that I hope, fervently hope, I shall be able to accept the invitation of my good comrade Petrov and be there in Moscow to see the Dawn. In any case, whether or not I live till 1980 or sign off sooner, as William Morris wrote:
In 1925, with their big majority in Parliament, the government and the Tory Party intensified their offensive against the working class. In the discussions we had in the party leadership it was quite clear to us the way the wind was blowing. The big industrial fight was against wage cuts, particularly in the mining industry. The wages and conditions of all workers were under attack. Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minister, was adamant that “the wages of all workers must come down.”
In June the mine owners issued notices at the pits terminating all existing national and district agreements and demanding wage cuts and longer hours. The Miners’ Federation called on the T.U.C. to support them in their fight against these demands. The T.U.C. and the Miners’ Federation leaders met Baldwin, but his answer to their request to stop the wage cuts was a blunt “no”. The government was fully supporting the coal-owners.
At a further meeting of the T.U.C. and the miners’ leaders a resolution for action was passed and it was agreed that, as from the 3rst July, the transport unions would instruct their members not to move coal by road or rail. Now the chips were down and the government’s bluff was called. They gave way and instituted legislation giving the coal-owners a subsidy for nine months to maintain the wages and hours of labour of the miners. The Daily Herald called this Red Friday, the day of trade union victory, to distinguish it from Black Friday in 1921 when the Triple Alliance was burst asunder and the employers won.
While recognising and sharing in the victory, the Communist Party warned that the government was only biding its time and was making preparations for a real attack. Government ministers at their meetings in the country were saying, “We are not to be dictated to by the T.U.C. The wages of workers must come down.”
In September came the first blow, strangely enough, at the conference of the Labour Party. Since the birth of the Communist Party its members had worked unceasingly and unselfishly for the unity of the labour movement. On September 31 the Labour Party conference passed a resolution excluding Communists from acting as delegates to the Labour Party conference. Up till then many Communists had been delegates from their trade unions.
Following this decision, only days later, came the second blow from the Tory Party conference, where the delegates demanded “action against the Communists strong measures against the revolutionary movement in Britain” There is no doubt in my mind that the decisions of these two conferences, particularly that of the Labour Party, laid the foundation for the sweeping offensive against the working class which followed in 1925 and 1926.
In October came the arrest of the Communist Party executive members, known then and since as the “Arrest of the Twelve”. I was working in Liverpool when it happened. I read of the arrests in the newspaper and immediately packed my bag and came to London. When I got to King Street I was told the executive had been bailed out and were in session, although no one seemed to know where they were. Everyone was very cagey, as well they might be in such a situation. I was about to leave the office when a word whispered in my ear, “Meynell” gave me the clue. The executive were meeting at Francis Meynell’s house. He later became Sir Francis Meynell and for a time was editor of our paper, The Communist. A very nice and interesting fellow–no doubt about that but certainly never a revolutionary.
When I arrived, the executive were in the middle of a discussion. We had an extraordinary problem and no one was shirking the issue. The leaders of the party had been charged with: “Uttering and publishing seditious libel- conspiring to incite soldiers to mutiny- receiving Moscow gold.” A load of balderdash, of course, but it was clear to us the authorities were in deadly earnest and in the attack on the working class the Communists were to be the first for the Tory chopper. These people knew quite well who were best able to mobilise the working class for struggle, and so the leaders of the Communist Party were to be safely “got rid of” for a time.
After discussion it was decided to elect an acting executive and officials, and that no publicity would be given to this, because naturally the new leaders could easily follow the twelve into prison, so an entire silence was maintained. To my astonishment I was elected acting general secretary. This was a new role for me, and also in new conditions. Before, I was always one of those in jail looking out at the fight. Now I was outside and with a heavy responsibility.
Thousands of branches of the Labour Party, the trade unions, hundreds of trades councils, poured in protests to the Home Office against the arrests and demanding the twelve be released. Many trade union national executives, including the Miners’ Federation, protested in letter and person to the Home Secretary. It has always amazed me that, in circumstances where it is obvious that injustice has been done, certain people will make a stand yet at the same time remain blind to the political realities which cause such injustices. Of course we had to make preparations for the trial. Willie Gallacher, Johnnie Campbell and Harry Pollitt were to defend themselves to ensure that the politics of the case were adequately represented in Court. The others, Albert Inkpin, Wal Hannington, Bill Rust, Tommy Bell, Robin Page Arnot, Ernest Cant, Tom Wintringham, Arthur McManus and John Murphy were to be represented by Sir Hendry Slesser, M.P. and Mr. Arthur Henderson Jnr., instructed by W. H. Thompson.
The trial of the Twelve, which was held in No. 1 court of the Old Bailey and was presided over by Mr. Justice Rigby Swift, will go down in history as one of the biggest political trials of this century. It should also be recorded as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated in a British court of law.
On the morning the trial opened hundreds were waiting to get into the Court, many of them without hope, yet they stayed there all day getting bits of news of what was happening inside. The case for the prosecution was a regurgitation of the unfounded accusations brought against Albert Inkpin in the 1921 trial in connection with the sale of the pamphlet The Statutes of the Communist International; this, of course, to try to prove that the Communist Party was seeking to destroy the constitution of the British government by revolutionary means and (as also suggested in Court) probably to murder leading members of the government; and secondly, that the Communist Party was inciting the armed forces to disobey orders and thus violating the 1797 Mutiny Act. Pollitt pointed out in his defence that this Act had been passed by the government of Pitt to deal with an actual mutiny in the British Navy and was certainly never meant to deal with working men in a political trial in 1925. The accusation that the British Communist Party was receiving “Moscow gold” was one of the supposed trump cards of the prosecution, but it never trumped anything. The highest figure mentioned by the prosecution was £14,000, which Gallacher proved was the income from the sale of our newspaper; and if one took into consideration the contributions paid by the membership, then 5,000; the total income came to a much more substantial amount, and thus the sum of £14,000 was more than accounted for.
But no matter the poverty of the case for the prosecution, or the excellence of the case for the defendants, the case was prejudged before it started. The jury retired and in twenty minutes was back with a verdict of guilty. The proof that this was a prejudiced verdict can be seen by the action of the judge. Remember, according to the charges, the Twelve were guilty of sedition, incitement to mutiny, receiving money illegally and intent to destroy the British government by force. Yet Mr. Justice Rigby Swift was prepared to allow seven of the defendants to go free if they repudiated the Communist Party! Addressing the prisoners he said: “The jury have found you twelve men guilty of the serious offence of conspiracy to publish seditious libels and to incite people to induce soldiers and sailors to break their oaths of allegiance. It is obvious from the evidence that you are members of an illegal party carrying on illegal work in this country. . . . Five of you, Inkpin, Gallacher, Pollitt, Hannington and Rustwill go to prison for twelve months.” Then came
sos alache months, Handingaone and upon 80 ., Continuing, the judge said: “You remaining seven have heard what I have had to say about the society to which you belong. You have heard me say it must be stopped. … Those of you who will promise me that you will have nothing more to do with this association or the doctrine it preaches, I will bind over to be of good behaviour in the future. Those of you who do not promise will go to prison.” And there it was, men supposedly found guilty of the worst charges in the crime calendar were to be let off all they had to do was to cease being Communists. Very touching, but it gave away the aim of the whole trial, which was to try and destroy the Communist Party and so behead the working-class movement. To Mr. Rigby Swift’s chagrin the seven remained silent, and with a grunt he sent them all to prison for six months.
With the Twelve safely tucked away in Wandsworth Gaol and the attack against the working class mounting, I called a special extended executive meeting of the party for the weekend January 9-10, 1926. We invited party trade union leaders and representatives from every district. It was crystal clear that the government were about to challenge the trade unions and show them who was master. For the executive meeting I prepared the main report, which dealt with the imperative need for unity of the working-class forces to defeat the govern
ment’s offensive against the wages and living standards of the workers. I take three points from my speech to illustrate its general character:
“We must change the leadership of the labour movement.
We cannot leave McDonald, Thomas and the Labour right wingers to use the movement for the benefit of the [capitalists.”
We must build a definite left wing in the labour move-ment. This cannot be all Communist, but if it does not include Communists it ceases to be left.”
“There can be nothing in the nature of a revolutionary victory in this country unless we build a mass Communist Party.”
In line with this report we had a special report from Arthur Horner dealing with our work in the factories and the necessity of building Communist groups in the factories, working in unity with the Labour left. The resolution said on this:
“This enlarged Executive declares that the industrial crisis emphasises the correctness of the Party policy in insisting on militant groupings organised in factories, pits and depots.”
This meeting, the discussion and the hammering out of party policy, laid the basis for our work up to and during the General Strike of 1926. Because of our correct policy and the work of our members, despite our semi-legality, we were a real force during the general strike, uniting and leading the working class in many areas of the country.
The history of the General Strike is known and has been the subject of countless books, so I will not dwell too much on it.
The leadership of the trade unions could not possibly refuse the call to support the miners when the government made their challenge, but it was painfully obvious to the politically initiated that the trade union leadership had no belly for the
struggle. Yet what wonderful memories exist of those days!
There was the mammoth May Day march, a really wonderful demonstration of workers’ power. I marched that day with Tommy Bell who had just come out of prison after doing his six months. What must Tommy have felt, to leave a prison cell and participate in such a demonstration?
A few days later all means of manceuvre between the
T.U.C. and the government ceased. The government’s mind was made up, the hour of confrontation had arrived and the general strike was on. The great contention of the period was that it was not only a general strike but a national strike, and so in many parts of the country the workers actually began to run the affairs of the community. They controlled food distri-bution, gave out permits for transport of goods, and so on.
This happened mainly where the trade unions were led by Labour militants and Communists, and was quite prevalent in the coalfields.
During the strike there was an unquenchable thirst for news. The government published the British Gazette under the editorship of Churchill, and the T.U.C. the British Worker.
News of what was happening in the country was hard to come by, but in this regard our office at King Street was one of the best clearing houses. The most active news-bringers to London from the country were the scouts who came on their motor-bikes. Most of them were our fellows, and they not only deposited their news bulletins at the respective trade union Offices but also at King Street, where we engaged them in discussion and consequently got much more from them than the written news which was considered sufficient by the orthodox trade union people.
We published our own news of the strike from King Street which was, I think, the best and most objective of the news sheets published. The British Gazette, under Churchill, spewed out its anti-working-class, anti-Communist venom, and the British Worker was good and helpful but not nearly forceful enough in giving a lead to the strikers. We had real difficulties in getting our bulletins printed and published. Stencils were
cut in several places and printing was moved from place to place. The distribution was done mainly by women, who did wonderful work during the strike. In distribution, prams came in very useful and many a policeman was passed by a smiling mum with a chirpy baby in the pram sitting atop several quire of our news bulletins. But not all got past, and several of our women were arrested. Two I remember were Mariorie Pollitt and Sadie Span, but there were many more. There were many arrests during the strike, and Tommy Jackson, who was acting chairman of the party, found his way inside much to his disgust.
Despite the brave words of the British Worker, despite the militant mood of the working class, there was no effort by the trade union leaders to mobilise the workers for the struggle.
Instead the strike was turned into a playground. Football and cricket matches were organised, sports events and entertainments to pass the time. I repeat, to pass the time. I remember some years later trying to explain to a continental audience why this thing happened during the strike period, but the only response I got was incredulous looks. To them it did not make sense, and I could certainly see their point of view. The real reason, of course, was the firm determination by the trade union leaders to dampen down the fires of struggle. J. H.
Thomas and others were desperately afraid the strike would become a real political challenge to the government, and they were determined this would not happen. That is the only reason that explains why, after nine days, when the working-class challenge was really mounting and biting, the T.U.C. called off the strike.
It is this mentality and action that differentiates the reformist from the militant. The reformist says,
For the love of
heaven, keep quiet. God said it to the father. The father said it to the child. The teacher said it to the child. The child grows up with it. The gaffer says it to the worker. Keep your nose clean, don’t make any trouble. Be humble. Leave it to us, and everything will be all right.” The way of the militant is simple. Everything you get must be fought for. The harder
you fight the more you get, and to win political power is the
main aim.
The kind of thing that was happening during the nine days of strike was described in Lord Samuel’s autobiography. He was an important go-between, with the government on one hand and the T.U.C. on the other. I think he was a bloody old scoundrel, but at this time he had a reputation as a radical and he used it to the fullest. Many back doors were opened during the strike and discussions went on that the workers never knew about, and still don’t know. But the sum total of these was the sell-out of the interests of the working class and victory for the government and the employers.
In the aftermath of the strike the workers took a very heavy beating. Of course there was the promise of no recriminations, no punishments for the workers, but this was rubbish. Rail-waymen were put on two or three days a week and their wages were cut. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs altogether, and the militants were the worst off of all. They took the biggest beating, to teach them a lesson and to teach others not to be militant. The trade unions lost heavily in membership, and many unions exhausted their funds paying strike benefit. The labour movement was in retreat, no doubt about that, and so was our party as part of the labour move-ment. The history of the party shows that when the labour movement goes back so does the party and when the labour movement goes forward the party goes forward too. The general strike period was no different. Of the thousands of members we won during the nine days, the vast majority left when the strike was sold out.
On October 16-17 the Party Congress was called. The executive was re-elected and the policy of the party debated and decided on. We knew there would be a long climb back to restore confidence to the working class. We knew there would be a recession in the struggle, but there will always be workers who will fight against injustice no matter what the odds; and, just as important where the fight takes place, there will always be other workers who will come into the fight as
it develops. No matter how deep the wound the working class receives, it will always get over it. That much I know by all my experience. The problem often is to get over it in the quickest possible time.
I wasn’t sorry to have Inkpin, Gallacher, Pollitt and the others back in harness after their spell in prison. Men of their calibre were worth their weight in gold in the autumn of 1926.
I relinquished my acting general secretaryship with the greatest of pleasure, kidding Inkpin and the others that while they were inside and I was in charge we had trebled our membership, forgetting to mention the loss after the strike period.
On my return from Ireland I found the country in a political ferment. A Labour government, with Liberal support, had been formed arising from the general election of November 1923. This government, headed by Ramsay McDonald as prime minister, had run into trouble and was in no way solving the deep economic crisis. The cost of living was high, wages were low and unemployment still at a very high level. Despite this the big political discussion was taking place on foreign policy. The de jure recognition of the Soviet Union had been effected in the early days of the Labour government, and demands were being made by Labour M.P.s for this to be followed up by normal trading and diplomatic relationships.
This demand soon ran into difficulties. The Tories were vehemently against. They demanded compensation for British property in the Soviet Union which had been nationalised by the Soviet government, and also trading rights for British firms on Soviet territory. The first was realisable, but naturally the Soviet government would not entertain the latter. In Parliament Lloyd George supported the Tories, so with a Tory-Liberal coalition the minority Labour government was in difficulty. Pressure by Labour M.P.s, however, forced the government to open discussions with the Soviet government on compensation for confiscated British property, trading relations and a British loan to the Soviet Union.
The Soviet delegation arrived in Britain in April 1924, and negotiations under Arthur Ponsonby from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs began immediately. By August all the problems had been settled except one: the compensation for British property. Then news came that negotiations had broken down. The Tories were jubilant, saying this showed that it was impossible to negotiate with these Bolsheviks. In this critical situation, when it was obvious that the future of the Labour government was in jeopardy, a number of Labour M.P.s went into action. One of them who played a leading part, and who later told the full story, was Edmund Morel, M.P. for Dundee, a man I knew well. Morel was secretary of the Union of Democratic Control, a champion of the colonial peoples and founder of the Congo Reform Association in 1904. Among his many books and pamphlets outstanding was Red Rubber, an exposure of the rubber slave trade in the Congo. Morel and the others had discussions with the Soviet delegation and then went to Ponsonby with a suggested formula. At first this was accepted, but later rejected by Ponsonby, and it was deadlock again. On the critical day when Parliament was to re-assemble and a parliamentary statement of the negotiations was to be made in the House of Commons, Labour M.P.s again saw the Soviet delegation and only four hours before the parliamentary statement was due agreement was reached by all parties in what were really last-minute negotiations. Edmund Morel later told the story of what the argument was about. The British government wanted the words “valid claims” inserted in the compensation agreement. The Soviet delegation suggested “valid and approved by both governments”. The Soviet government demanded they should have a say in what was “valid”. The eventual compromise which was finally accepted used the words “agreed claims”.
This draft treaty on trade was, however, never put into effect. It was clear that the Tories violently opposed any trade with the Soviet Union and, with the Liberals supporting them, the defeat of the Labour government was only a matter of time. The Communist Party estimated that the general election was at most only a few months away.
The party called for a closing of the working-class ranks and for an end to the divisions in the labour movement and a fight for the return of a majority Labour government based on the unity of the working class, with Communists being accepted with full rights in the Labour Party. We decided that no Communist candidates would run against Labour candidates when the election took place and instructed our branches to submit the names of Communists to the Labour selection conferences to go forward for selection with the Labour nominees. In some constituencies the nominations of Communists were ruled out by right-wing Labour, but in others Communists were nominated and eventually selected to stand as joint Communist-Labour candidates. In this way Saklatvala contested Battersea and won the seat. In all, seven Communists stood as Labour-Communist candidates and in Leeds Tom Mann lost a selection conference by two votes. Gallacher was only narrowly defeated in the Motherwell selection.
In Dundee, however, the position was different. It was a double-barrelled constituency, two seats for the city. There was only one Labour candidate, Edmund Morel. The other M.P. was Edwin Scrymgeour, the prohibitionist, who, while occasionally supporting Labour, was not officially connected with the Labour Party. We took a decision to contest Dundee and I was chosen as the candidate, thus becoming the only “clear” Communist candidate in the election. However, it was not the British-Soviet draft treaty that defeated the Labour government. The defeat came on a much smaller issue. Johnnie Campbell, who was then the editor of the Workers Weekly, the paper of the Communist Party, had written an article which the Crown held to be seditious. This contention was one which might have been difficult to sustain in Court and, on second thoughts, the Attorney General withdrew the charge. The Tories, hell bent for an election at any cost, raised an outraged cry. The Tory press claimed intimidation of the Labour government by the Communists and in parliament the Tories tabled a vote of censure on the government. This vote of censure was defeated, but a Liberal amendment to it seeking an “appointment or a select Committee to investigate ” the withdrawal of the charge against J. R. Campbell was carried against the government by 364 votes to 198. Next day, October 10, Ramsay McDonald announced the dissolution of Parliament.
Our party was first in the field in the Dundee hustings. I commenced my campaign with meetings on the 14th October. With me I had Harry Pollitt who, because he had been in Dundee with Gallacher in the previous elections, knew Dundee as well as his home town of Gorton. He was also a great favourite with the local shipyard workers, many of whom were to him “fellow boilermakers”. Also with me was Helen Crawfurd, a wonderful woman speaker invaluable in an election in a women’s town. And also Johnnie Campbell. Poor Johnnie, he always had to open his meetings with an apology: “I would much rather have discussed the election without dragging in personalities, but I will have to because if I don’t, you will.” After all, he was supposed to be the cause of the election, although he soon disposed of that in his speeches. Still, it was all grist to the mill and filled the meetings to capacity, with Johnnie always in top form.
The Dundee Tories and Liberals had made a pact for the election, running one candidate each, two votes -one Tory, one Liberal. The Liberal was Sir Andrew Duncan, a barrister from Kent, who boasted of Scots ancestry. This brought him his first mistake in the election. At his first meeting he was laying on the charm and said, “I come as a Scotsman among Scotsmen.” Then a voice from the audience put him right: “Hauf o’ wiz are Irish.” This was indeed true. At any Dundee meeting 50 per cent or more of the audience were Irish. Scrymgeour, who had lived all his life in Dundee, knew this and always deliberately campaigned for the Irish Catholic vote.
Early on in the campaign Harry Pollitt also gave Duncan a knock. Sir Andrew let it be known in the press that he wanted a debate with a trade unionist, preferably a shipyard worker, no doubt to show he knew the trade union position very well. The boilermakers got together and accepted the challenge and put forward as their speaker Harry Pollitt. The brave Sir Andrew then changed his pipe music. He would not debate with a Communist, he said, much to the glee of the local shipyard workers who put his gas at a peep for the rest of the campaign.
Sir Andrew Duncan’s running mate was a Tory called Frederick Wallace who had already contested Dundee in the 1923 General Election.
The Labour candidate was Edmund Morel, who as I have said had taken an important part in the British-Soviet negotiations on the trade treaty. When the Labour government was first formed he was tipped to be the first Foreign Minister, but he was much too left for Ramsay McDonald, who took the Foreign Ministry himself as well as being the Prime Minister. Morel was a strong candidate, a good speaker and always on the left, but he always hedged at being officially associated with the Communists. Privately he would say he hoped the Communists would win the second seat, but he would never say it publicly.
Edwin Scrymgeour was the sitting member and, while he stood as a prohibitionist, he campaigned for the second Labour vote. I said at the time he was the candidate from heaven who would steal a vote from all parties, Tory, Liberal, Labour and Communist, and then say he had a mandate for the abolition of the liquor trade. This in fact was a great joke at the time, because Dundee was one of the most “drunken” cities in Britain and many of those who voted for Scrymgeour could be seen every Saturday in life fou’ with the beer and whisky.
This election was one of the most rousing in Dundee’s long history of tousy election campaigns. From the day I opened my campaign on October 14th to my final meeting on the 28th I spoke to full houses only. On many occasions there were overflows. This went for every candidate. From the City Hall holding three thousand to the smaller halls holding a few hundreds, all were packed out. The main issues in the election, in fact almost the only two issues, were British-Soviet relations and employment with good wages. In Dundee these fused together because Dundee is a big textile town and before the war of 1914-18 a large flax manufacture was based on the export of flax from Russia. This had dried up and many flax workers were unemployed, so the question of British-Soviet trade was not an academic one in Dundee. It was on diplomatic relations between Britain and the Soviet Union that the big election fight took place.
I had just returned from my spell on the Communist International and my knowledge of the Soviet Union was standing me in good stead. I knew what I was talking about and could discuss developments in the Soviet Union at first hand. Morel, with his knowledge of British-Soviet trade discussions, was also campaigning well on this issue. This rattled Sir Andrew Duncan and his Tory running mate, and as they tried to answer the questions their meetings became rowdier and rowdier. They were under a constant barrage of interruptions, which was not unnatural because they began to insult people at the meetings. Many of the audience had been in dire straits and unemployed for months, and they retaliated by showing their disgust in good election fashion. The singing of “The Red Flag” at the end of the Tory and Liberal meetings became a commonplace event. The local newspapers, seeking to find a reason for this, accused the Communists of trying to break up the Tory-Liberal meetings. I was mad about this and wrote to the papers pointing out the Communists had a campaign in operation and this was stretching our resources to the limit and occupying 100 per cent of our time. We had no time to think about other candidates’ meetings.
So it was Morel and I for recognition and trade with the Soviet Union, Duncan and Wallace with their “down with the Bolsheviks and trust the boss” attitude, and in between came Scrymgeour talking of God and Heaven, the iniquity of the drink trade, appealing to the reason of the Labour voters, and in particular to the Irish Catholic voters. As the campaign went on he became more and more anti-Soviet, no doubt through pressure of the Catholics and in order to win Catholic support.
Of course the election hustings were full of good give and take questions and answers, with the Tory and Liberal mostly on the receiving end. The following question, noted by the press of the period and kept for posterity, is a good example. At Sir Andrew Duncan’s final rally, after he had concluded his final speech and was no doubt saying to himself, as all candidates do, “Well that’s finished,” the chairman asked for questions. Up jumped one bright fellow to ask: “As the only difference between Churchill and you is that Winnie sent us to war to slash the Germans whilst you stayed at home to slash wages, is there any reason why we should not give you the same dose as the Kiel Canal rat catcher?” Amid a storm of cheers Sir Andrew was heard to whimper, “I stand on my record.”
As the election campaign neared its end it became increasingly clear that Labour was gaining ground. It was at this point that the Zinoviev letter incident broke (1). This was one of the crudest political frauds ever inflicted on the British voter. It was a forged letter purporting to have been sent by the Communist International to the British Communist Party. On the Saturday before the election all the press in Britain had banner headlines: “Soviets Intervene in British Elections,” “Red Hands on Britain’s Throat”, and so on. Immediately Rakovsky, the Soviet Chargé d’Affaires in Britain, indignantly and emphatically denied the authenticity of the letter and categorically stated it a forgery. All Sunday the country waited for an explanation from Ramsay MacDonald, who was Foreign Minister, but nothing came. On Monday the local paper in Dundee, The Courier, carried a huge banner headline:
COMMUNIST PLOT-RAMSAY MACDONALD SILENT
While such a denial from the Soviet Ambassador was to be expected the fact remains that the socialist government, the foreign office, and Mr. McDonald personally were satisfied it was a genuine document and not a forgery.
Arthur McManus, who had taken my place on the Communist International and who was an alleged signatory to the letter from Zinoviev, was speaking at Manchester two days before the poll. In the audience were police and C.I.D. men. McManus denounced the document as a forgery and challenged the police to arrest him, but no one moved. The last thing the Foreign Office ever wanted was an investigation into the origins of the document.
On Tuesday, MacDonald made a statement casting doubt on the genuineness of the document, but the damage was done. The British electorate went to the polls without a clear statement from MacDonald, and the greatest hoax ever perpetrated in British political history had paid off. The result of the poll was a resounding Tory victory. On dissolution of Parliament the state of the parties was:
Tories 258
Labour 193
Liberal 158
After the election it was:
Tories 403
Labour 157
Liberal 38
The Liberals who had precipitated the election were smashed and never again returned as a main British parliamentary party. That was the outcome of their anti-Soviet policy and their demand for an investigation in the Johnnie Campbell case.
Edmund Morel held Dundee, with Scrymgeour second. The result was:
Morel (Lab.) 32, 864
Scrymgeour (Prob.) 29, 193
Wallace (Con.) 28, 118
Duncan (Lib.) 25, 566
Stewart (Comm.) 8, 340
After the count we mounted the platform to say our piece, but the Tory and the Liberal would not speak. They were sorely disappointed because they had really believed that the Zinoviev scare had won them the seats. Morel, knowing this, went for them, saying he would demand an immediate investigation from Parliament, which I think he did. Scrymgeour, safe in the second seat, found time to thank God for being good to him and thus saving the second seat from the Communist menace. He did not add but must have thought, “Yes, and with the aid of the Irish Catholic vote.”
With such a resounding victory at the polls the road was now open for a direct attack on the British working class. It certainly came.
Footnote (1): Some facts regarding the notorious letter came to light years after-wards. The letter was dated Moscow, September 15th 1924. It purported to be signed by three people: Zinoviev, President of the Presidium of the I.K.K.I., McManus, Member of the Presidium, Kuusinen, Secretary.
Zinoviev was not president of the presidium of the I.K.K.I. (Communist International) although he was president of the I.K.K.I. itself, and therefore would not sign himself as president of the presidium. Also, he always signed as G. Zinoviev. Secondly, McManus always signed as A. McManus. or Arthur McManus. Thirdly, Kuusinen was not the secretary of I.K.K.I The secretary was a man named Kolarov. To add to this mountain of obvious forgery the letter was headed from “the Third Communist International”. There was no Third Communist International. It was always referred to as “the Third International’ because it followed the First and Second Internationals, which were not Communist. These were such infantile mistakes that even a cursory examination would have shown the document to be a blatant forgery.
In later years it came to light that a Foreign Office official, Mr. J. D. Gregory, who was dismissed from the Foreign Office after an inquiry into some illegal currency deals, was stated to have been involved with some Russian emigrés in the forgery of the letter. This was never ultimately proved, but the whole story of the Zinoviev letter, dealt with in W. P. and Zelda K. Coates’ book A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations, is fascinating reading for all students of political history.
A little over a year had passed since the Communist Party’s first parliamentary contest at Caerphilly when it had to face its first general election. Parliament was dissolved in October 1922 and the election was on. We were fighting for united political action with the Labour Party, and at the general election we came out strongly for electoral unity. In five constituencies our members contested with Labour support: Saklatvala for Battersea North, Geddes for Greenock, Windsor for Bethnal Green N.E., Vaughan for Bethnal Green S.W. and Walton Newbold at Motherwell. At Dundee Bill Gallacher contested because it was a two-seat constituency and there was only one Labour candidate.
Because of my knowledge of Dundee and its politics I was sent along with Harry Pollitt to assist Gallacher. In 1908 I had been election agent to Scrymgeour, when Churchill had been elected with great enthusiasm. Now I was back in 1922 to see him rejected with equal enthusiasm.
Gallacher arrived in Dundee on a Saturday evening. In fact he left an all-night sitting of the Party’s National Executive to travel from London on the day train. We had arranged a welcoming party for him which was more successful than we had ever hoped; at the Tay Bridge Station there were nearly 10,000 people gathered, along with the Engineers’ pipe band. At the station we formed a procession; the band, then Gallacher and the election agent, Jimmy Gardner (who later became general secretary of the Foundry Workers’ Union), then the thousands streaming behind. We marched through the town singing “Vote, Vote, Vote for Willie Gallacher!” and finished up in the Albert Square where we held the first meeting of the campaign.
That Dundee election campaign was a rowdy, tousy, all action affair. there were six candidates for two seats, but the main protagonists were Gallacher and Churchill. In every speech Willie went after Churchill and his government, and in his speeches Churchill slanged Russia, the Communists and Gallacher in particular. As the campaign progressed the Gallacher and Churchill meetings were packed to capacity with hundreds in overflows and Churchill invariably getting the bird.
Winston Churchill’s campaign material for the 1922 election. In the words of The Ramones, “Glad to se ya go, go, go, go! Goodbye!”
Gallacher’s campaign was wonderfully organised and could serve as a lesson to many present day parliamentary candidates. It was in this election I first saw the effective use of the propaganda tactic of the short street meeeting. Jimmy Shand came up from Salford with his car – the same one we had at Caerphilly – to help Gallacher. Willie got a megaphone – no loudspeakers in those days- and, with Jimmy Shand driving, they toured the shopping centres and streets holding short quarter of an hour meetings and then moving on. In these days meetings were held at selected points at advertised times and Gallacher’s car and megaphone meetings were ‘with it’ political campaigning that none of the other candidates, not even Churchill, could match and were one of the reasons why Gallacher was the best known candidate.
Because of his powerful personality and forceful campaigning, Gallacher attracted many non-communists to support him. We had hundreds of very able people on election work, but our real campaigning punch was provided by our chalking team. They were experts and did a real artistic job. Right down the middle of all the Dundee tramlines, spaced every fifty yards, was a Gallacher slogan- not all political- such as , “Don’t be silly, vote for Willie” or “Willie for Dundee”. No one had to ask who Willie was. These slogans were brushed on with a solution of carbide and whitewash and withstood all weathers for many months.
Towards the end of the campaign Churchill suffered a second body blow. It was bad enough Willie kicking hell out of him in every speech, but his one-time pal, the Dundee press autocrat D. C. Thomson, also took a hand. Churchill had asked the Dundee Courier (D. C. Thomson’s morning news-paper) to publish an advertisement giving quotations from speeches from Austen Chamberlain and Bonar Law, of course supporting the Churchill point of view, but Thomson refused to accept the advertisement. No doubt Churchill’s ego was offended; anyway there followed a real slanging match between old David Thomson and Churchill in correspondence which lasted right up to polling day, when the whole correspondence was published verbatim in the D. C. Thomson press as the voters were going to the poll. On the day polling took place the Dundee Courier published a leading article which commenced as follows:
CHURCHILL WITH HIS CHOLER UP
The Tale of a Lost Temper
Whatever may be his chances at the poll today, there can be no doubt that Winston Churchill is in a vile temper. He has taken no pains to conceal the fact. For those within his reach he has buckets of calumny . . . Mr. Pilkington, Mr. Morel, Mr. Scrymgeour, and Mr. Gallacher. Now he has turned full blast on the Dundee newspapers. Whose turn it will be next God only knows.
And in the very same issue Thomson published a letter he had sent to Churchill which ended: “To be quite candid, if you wish to discuss anything with me on friendly terms, cut out this threat nonsense and let us discuss the matter man to man.” Churchill never replied to this letter.
If Churchill could read an election campaign, and I have no doubt he could, he must have known he was a “goner” long before the result was declared. The amazing scene at the declaration of the poll is vividly described in Gallacher’s Rolling of the Thunder and I will leave it there.
The Communist candidate for Dundee in the 1922 election – Willie Gallacher.
One more thing about this election I remember. The editor of our newspaper, the Communist, asked Gallacher to do a brief biography for publication. Remember this was Willie’s first parliamentary contest. How many of you municipal and parliamentary candidates have been in this same position? But the editor hadn’t bargained for what he received from Willie, which was as follows:
WILLIE GALLACHER
Dundee Communist Candidate- Story of My Life
I am born
I grow up – I go to school – I grow up more
I get a job carrying milk – I continue to grow
I leave school – I get a job with a grocer
I still grow
I get a job in an engineering shop – I began to grow in earnest
I become a knut: I join the IOGT – I’m a helluva fine fellow
Years pass – I join the Socialist movement
I lose my job
I stop growing – I go to sea – I get shipwrecked
I don’t get drowned – (What a pity)
I’m still a knut – I get married – Then get cracked
I start growing again – smaller
I go to America – become a “bum” – I return
The war starts
I grow again – crazy
I get involved in strikes – I go to gaol – I grow up again sad
I come out – The war goes on – So do I
The war ends – More strikes – More gaol
Come out again – I go to Russia – Great experience
Train on fire – Adrift in the Arctic Sea
Back again – Trouble again – Gaol again
Out again – Communist Party going strong
I become a “heid yin” – Communist Party not going strong any longer
I become a Parliamentary candidate
Great sensation – Overwhelming majority
Triumphant march to London – I enter Colney Hatch
Poor old Gallacher
Amen.
For the uninitiated, Colney Hatch is the site of a big mental hospital in north London. Willie had no romantic ideas about this election. His main aim was to expose Churchill and contribute to his final defeat. This he did handsomely as the final result showed:
Scrymgeour (Prob.) 32, 578
Morel (Lab.) 30, 292
MacDonald (N.L.) 22, 244
Churchill (N.L.) 20, 466
Pilkington (L.) 6, 681
Gallacher (Comm.) 5, 906
A year later in the 1923 General Election, Gallacher pushed his vote up to 10,380 in the same Dundee constituency, but by that time I was in the centre of world revolutionary politics- Moscow.
1922- the newly elected Prohibitionist MP for Dundee Edwyn Scrymgeour on his way to take his seat in Parliament.
This was the first parliamentary election ever to be contested by the British Communist Party. The decision to contest was taken by the Party Executive on July 16th 1921. The main reasons were, firstly, the severe attack on the party at the time sixty-eight leading Communists had been arrested and many of them, like myself, were doing hard labour. Secondly, the economic position was becoming desperate. In July, the unemployment figures, according to the Labour Gazette, were 2,178,000. Thirdly, it was a mining constituency and the betrayal of the miners by the right-wing Labour leaders had just taken place. Black Friday was only a few months before the by-election. During the miners’ struggle the party had supported them wholeheartedly throughout and in fact was the only political party to give full support, and we were therefore entitled to stand in a mining constituency. No doubt the reason that I was selected as the candidate was because I had been arrested for delivering speeches in favour of the miners’ wage demands and, when the election date was announced, was actually in jail only a few miles from the constituency. For these reasons the party decided that a contest was necessary and completely justified.
The selection of a Labour candidate created some trouble. A whole number of right-wing labourites, including Ramsay McDonald, were angling for what was considered a safe seat. However, the miners were so disgusted with the action of the right-wingers during the struggle of the Triple Alliance (miners, transport workers and railwaymen) and the final sell-out of Black Friday, that they had no hope of support from the miners’ lodges. The eventual choice of candidate for Labour was Morgan Jones. Like myself, he had been a conscientious objector during the war, but only on religious grounds. He was one of the big guns of the Independent Labour Party, a Baptist lay preacher and at the time of the election, Chairman of the Bible Classes in the valley and, as Tommy Jackson said, “this endeared him to the old women of both sexes”. He was a nice chap but not a virile working-class politician. The Coalition (Tory- Liberal) candidate was Ross Edmunds.
Morgan Jones had the full Labour election machine behind him- the Labour Party, the Miners Federation and the Daily Herald. Even the Free Church Council campaigned vigorously on his behalf. The Daily Herald laid it on thick. “A brilliant young man with a promising career before him–a man who was born among you a fine Baptist who can speak Welsh.”
The government candidate, Edmunds, had the traditional Tory and Liberal Party machines and all the capitalist newspapers on his side. To match this, we were a handful of rebels, maybe sixty in all mostly strangers to the district–with no election machinery, no tradition, no money, nothing to give except the “message” of working-class struggle to gain political power. Our main slogan during the election was ” All Power To The Workers”. Yet we conducted such a powerful political campaign that three days before the poll the Labour Party got the wind up, and in the Labour camp, with its big battalions, the word went out to smash the Communists. The Labour Party bullied, cajoled and wheedled and finished with an SOS- “Don’t split the vote and let the Coalition candidate in”, while the chapels worked overtime calling for the protection of Morgan Jones from the ungodly Reds.
We had a wonderful team of speakers- -Bill Gallacher, Helen Crawfurd and John McLean from Scotland, Walton Newbold, Arthur McManus, Bert Joy, Harry Webb, Joe Vaughan, who came within a hair’s breadth of winning Bethnal Green for the Communist Party in the 1924 parliamentary election, Tommy Jackson and myself. Open-air speaking was our strength. We opened our meetings in the Square in Caerphilly at ten o’clock in the morning and closed them at eleven o’clock at night. We swept the Coalition candidate supporters from the streets altogether, they retired from this arena defeated. Early on in the campaign, a Coalition speaker challenged Harry Webb during one of his speeches to a debate, and this was arranged to take place at Abertridwr. The hour arrived for the debate but not the Coalition speaker; he did not turn up. Bill Gallacher had a debate in public with a group headed by Captain Gee, VC. It was a political massacre of Coalition policies. One of my happiest recollections of the election was of a meeting when Edmunds asked me to state where I stood in relation to the industrial strife in British industry, and then I watched his face as I replied. His fixed conception of the inevitability of the master-worker permanent industrial relationship took a very hard knock.
I remember one night Gallacher and I were speaking at a place called Sengenet. The local synod had been having a meeting and when they finished a number of ministers came around the meeting to have some fun. “Ah! The Bolsheviks! Why don’t you read the Bible?” shouted one of them. Now that was a real question! Challenging Bill Gallacher and me to read the Bible! We gave them Bible lessons they had never dreamed of. Then, when they were quietened, and the audience were laughing their heads off, I told them quietly, “That’s what you get for putting people like Gallacher and me in gaol and making the Bible compulsory reading.”
Another time Tommy Jackson was holding forth to an audience in Caerphilly, when on looking up he noticed that the tower of the castle was leaning to one side. “There you are,” he said, “even the castle tower is leaning to the left.” It was just as well he was holding the meeting at that stance because if he had gone to the other side he would have seen it leaning to the right. Still, Tommy was always one to make the best of any situation.
Apart from our splendid team of propagandists we had dozens of hard workers on the knocker, selling our pamphlets, chalking, arguing in the streets and in the pubs. Everywhere there were people, our fellows were there. Many of them were unemployed and had come from all over Scotland, London, the Midlands and from every part of Wales- to help the party. To go into the committee rooms late in the evening and watch this bunch getting their shake-downs ready for the night was like walking into a picture from John Reed’s Ten Days That Shook The World. But they were a real bunch of first-class fighters. Dai Davies had charge of the Election Address and the job was done competently and on time.
In our campaign it was the transport that took the eye. One national newspaper talked of “Bolshevik emissaries rushing through the Caerphilly Division in expensive cars.” Actually, what happened was that Jimmy Shand came down with his big car from Liverpool and it did valuable service. It was certainly a big flash car; it seemed to hold dozens at a time and with great speed transported speakers and workers to the assigned places. Jimmy was possibly one of the best car drivers I ever knew, certainly one of the few I would sit back and trust on a pitch-black night, driving on a Welsh mountain-side.
The night before the poll I was talking to some journalists who were covering the election. They said, “Your speakers are first class, they have made a great impact. They have destroyed any chance the Coalition candidate had of pulling a patriotic vote-catching stunt, but in attacking and exposing the weakness of his policy you have created a real fear that a split vote will let the Coalition candidate in. You have frightened the Labour crowd and made them work as they have never done before. Your campaign has made the voters class-conscious enough to make them vote Labour but not enough to make them whole-hog Communists.” One should never under-estimate the wisdom of press reporters when speaking off the record and not for their papers, because the final result on polling day bore out their estimation:
Morgan Jones (Lab.) – 13, 699
Ross Edmunds (C. & L.)- 8, 957
Bob Stewart (Comm.) – 2, 592
We lost our deposit. We had spent all our money. In a constituency twenty miles broad, to cross which meant climbing three mountains real ones, not home-made mountains, as Ernie Brown called the slag heaps at the pits. We had given all the energy we had in a tremendously exhausting campaign. What did we get in return? In South Wales mining districts in 1921 there was mass unemployment, a psychology of gloom and despair. Labour was chanting “Leave it all to Parliament- direct action is dead”. We roused enthusiasm in many who had lost hope; we won an understanding that action by the rank and file was essential. We put light back in eyes grown leaden with despair, the spring back in the step of many a young miner, we painted a picture of a future of opportunity and prosperity.
For the first-ever Communist parliamentary election contest this was a real achievement. As the crowds waited for the result of the election, Gallacher, in his inimitable way, started a sing-song and soon everyone had joined in. When the result was announced, you would have thought by the shout that greeted the Communist vote that we had won the seat. We did not win the seat but we won many other things including, most of all, the appreciation that the British Communist Party had a right to take its place in parliamentary elections, against the alleged statesmen whose policies spelt ruin to Britain.
After the formation of the British Communist Party at the Leeds Conference, the main task was to build and strengthen the organisation. I was elected as the Scottish organiser, a very tough assignment.
The main political problem then was the beginning of mass unemployment, the fight for work, and the divisions which this creates in the working-class movement. During the war most big factories had established their “factory committees”. But now many of the factory committee members had become unemployed, and factory committees had employed and unemployed workers working together. This, however, gradually ceased and there began the unemployed workers’ committees which led to the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement which was to play such an important role in the working-class struggles of the 1920s. This segregation of employed and unemployed workers was not then and never has been a good thing for workers in struggle. One section is always played off against the other by the boss and inevitably the boss wins.
Naturally our fellows, being the most militant, suffered most and were the first victims in the factories. Many joined the ranks of the unemployed, and while this meant they had time for political campaigning it cut them off from the much more decisive political work in the factory organisation.
In this setting we commenced to gather together the socialist fragments and build the Communist Party in Scotland. We inherited the British Socialist Party branches, the Communist Labor Party branches, and Socialist Prohibition Fellowship Party branches. All rather loose in organisation, and as I very soon found out, very inflated in assumed membership. The Communist Labour Party were supposed to bring over 4,000 members but I doubt if there was half that number. The British Socialist Party claimed to bring over 10,000 members. If they did, there were thousands I never saw and I very much doubt if anyone else ever saw them. Propaganda was our strong point. We had many excellent speakers, and all dead sure of themselves. Tom Bell, for years the editor of The Communist; Willie Gallacher, for fifteen years M.P. for West Fife; Johnnie Campbell, who became editor of the Daily Worker, and Bill Joss, one of the ablest lecturers in the Scottish Labour College. These and many others made up a brilliant team of socialist agitators for the Scottish district of the new party.
Copies of The Communist- a forerunner of The Daily Worker.
Then there was the selling of our paper, The Communist, an extremely important part of our political work. With self-sacrificing effort of fellows like big Pat Quinlan, Malcolm McFarlane and others the sales rose by thousands. Nothing was a handicap to them. They were out on sales late and early, in snow, sleet and rain, nothing deterred them. At this period I remember one strange incident that came up in the ordinary course of the work. In Glasgow there was a big Irish docker named Jimmy Fearns. He originally came from Newry in Northern Ireland, and I think he was one of the founders of the Irish Citizen Army. Jimmy was out of work and, like most people in his circumstances, living in one of the model lodging houses for which Glasgow was famous-or infamous, depending on which way you look at it. I never knew why the name “model” was given to these dens of human suffering, they were certainly revoltingly original, but never model. One morning Jimmy came to me and said:
“Bob, can’t we do something for the modelers?”
“Have they any grievances?” I asked.
“Sure they got nothing but grievances.”
So we had a meeting with a number of representatives from the models, mostly men living apart from their wives and families and trying to keep two homes going. We got their grievances, published a leaflet and distributed it around the lodging houses. Because of this agitation a number of these places became cleaner and started to provide more up-to-date cooking and washing facilities.
The story was not without sequel. We were amply repaid for our work. For us there was the guarantee that our meetings in Glasgow were conducted in a peaceful atmosphere. The modelers were very handy fellows when the occasion arose. They lived in a society in which “might was right” and if there was any attempt to break up our meetings they soon put an end to that nonsense, saying “they defended those who defended them.”
The Scottish organisation took shape on the basis of our propaganda meetings. We had branches in every big borough from Glasgow to Aberdeen and a lone scout or two in places like Inverness, Dumfries, Perterhead and Fraserburgh. We listed speakers for the meetings, checked that they were advertised- because in those days it was a hit or miss business, sometimes the speaker did not turn up, sometimes the meetings were not advertised and there was no audience. All arrangements had to be checked and re-checked.
This meant money, and sometimes the sums were large, at least large for us. Two members of the Scottish Executive who did a magnificent job on finance for the party were John Inches and George Whitehead. By their work the Scottish Party was entirely self supporting, and with good finances the political and organisation work of the party received most attention. Thus early I already understood that freedom from financial worry is a boon to a Communist Party organiser.
The most distinguishing feature of the Scottish Party then was its solid industrial base. In fact, the party was so working-class that there was a real antipathy to what was termed “the intellectuals”. It was entirely wrong of course and was combated by the Party. At that time we had a number of students; one of them, Phil Canning, later to be elected as a Communist Councillor in Greenock for many years, became an outstanding representative of the working class. Our students became swallowed up in revolutionary thought and began to absent themselves from their university classes, thinking the revolution was round the corner. I had long conversations with them, and patiently explained that just as in the workshop a Communist had to be a capable worker and win the respect of his mates, so in the college and university the students must do the same. If a Communist could not pull his weight then his “preaching” will fall on deaf ears. A student with a degree was a much more valuable political worker than a student without a degree.
Our solid industrial base came largely from the members who had come to the party from the Clyde Workers’ Movements and the militant workers from the mines and the railways who also had an excellent record of militancy during the war. But they also brought a number of problems. Our relations with the Labour Party were not good. This was partly of our own making, in that many of the groups that had preceded the new Communist Party and helped to form it had a very abusive attitude towards the Labour Party. Many of these members were strong political individualists and spent the greater part of their political life calling the Labour Party names. Not that sometimes the abuse was not called for, but nevertheless it was not the right way to go about trying to cement relationships that certainly would have helped us to gain more working-class unity in action.
We also inherited a problem from the Socialist Labour Party, who had laid down that their members would not accept trade union office lest they be corrupted. We naturally had to fight against that principle; corruption in the trade unions was then and still is an occupational hazard for which membership of the Communist Party is a good antidote. This, however, was one of the reasons why many militant trade union leaders in Scotland did not immediately join our party.
Our principal problem in industry was to get a balanced understanding of the political work of the party, engaging in every struggle in the social field and blending this with our industrial work in the fight for wages and better working conditions. This conception was foreign to British politics and therefore the hardest nut to crack for our party. A break had been made during the war in the rent struggles on the Clydeside, which culminated in the pressure on the authorities being so great that a new Rent Act was passed in Parliament. The Clyde Workers’ Movement had played a decisive part in this fight, organising the workers in the factories and combining with the tenants’ organisations. In fact, it can truly be said it was this successful combination of social and industrial struggle that was the main reason for the success gained.
We also had to try and overcome strong syndicalist traditions which still endured in industry. In this there was good and bad. I well remember when the late Jack Tanner came to the party, at that time a strong syndicalist-in fact, he edited a paper called The Syndicalist from somewhere in Fetter Lane, London. But Handsome Jack, as he was called, developed ambitions to become a trade union leader and the Communist label did not make for an easy passage, so Jack changed the label.
Tom Mann in 1920.
Another syndicalist, but one who was quickly shedding his syndicalist ideas and who came to the party, was Tom Mann. A great national and international figure and the first Labour candidate to contest Aberdeen; a fine trade unionist, a first-class politician, a great social mixer, known to everyone left, right and centre, respected by all and one of the best speakers the Communist Party ever had; Tom Mann was a great asset to the British trade union movement and an excellent representative of the Communist Party.
In these early days the party attracted all kinds of industrial do-gooders and the sieve of struggle sorted them out. In Scotland we got our quota, but the vast majority of our members were fine men and women, with the success of the working-class struggles and the achievement of socialism as their main aim. We had leading miners from every coalfeld, engineers like Willie Gallacher and Hugh Hinselwood, Tom Bell and Jim Gardner (later to be the general secretary of the Foundry Workers Union) from the foundry workers, from the railways Jimmy Davidson and Jimmy Figgins who many years later was general secretary of the N.U.R., and George Whitehead from the Clerks. They and many others were held in the very highest esteem in the unions and the factories, enhancing the prestige of our party.
At that time we had not reached the stage of factory organisation, but there is no doubt that the work of our industrial members at the formative stage of the party laid a firm base for party industrial work in Scotland which has endured, expanded and strengthened until the present time. One of the big disappointments when the party was formed in Scotland was that John McLean, one of the foremost members of the British Socialist Party, did not join the new Communist Party.
John McLean.
McLean was undoubtedly one of the greatest British socialists of all time. Lenin spoke of him as a fearless fighter against imperialist war. When the first All Russian Congress of Workers and Soldiers’ Councils met, John McLean and Karl Leibknecht were appointed honorary members of the presidium in recognition of the great international character of their socialist work. Later McLean was appointed as the first consul for Russian affairs in Great Britain. In this job he did a vast amount of work and many Russians then living in Britain thanked him for his assistance.
McLean’s main aim was to have Labour Colleges in every county and city in Scotland and he succeeded in doing so in all the main cities and in many of the counties. These colleges brought many thousands of Scottish workers closer to the understanding of socialist principles. As a school teacher and a mass working-class leader McLean naturally gravitated to this form of mass socialist education. I was an Executive member of the Scottish Labour College, worked with McLean, and came to appreciate his outstanding capabilities in this form of work.
I am many times asked, “Why did McLean not join the Communist Party?’ I have always found some difficulty in answering. John McLean was a Communist. His life and work was that of a dedicated Communist motivated by sincere socialist principles. He was a most energetic man and never at rest, a powerful debater and a skilful propagandist. He could hold a crowd for hours with his oratory. He was a comparatively easy man to work with, but more an individualist worker than a collective one. There can be no doubt that the long spells in His Majesty’s prisons totally undermined his health and that this had an effect on his thinking in his later years, when he became obsessed with the idea that he would be poisoned. He refused to eat in anyone’s house and on occasions refused food even from his wife. I noticed this particularly when he came down to assist me in the Caerphilly by-election in which I stood as the Communist candidate.
He told me he did not like a number of the leading members of the Communist Party, but I think he would not be alone in that, and we had a number of discussions on this question. Yet such things should not detract from the indispensable contribution John McLean made to the advancement of the British working class. He was truly a giant in the British labour movement and an international socialist of whom the British people can be proud.
His early death in 1923 was a great blow to the Scottish working class.
Breaking the Fetters 